By: Alex Tilton

This one is a bit of a mixed bag. Spoilers ahead.

For the most part I was pleasantly surprised. Laid is a new species in my experience. It’s a dark romantic comedy. Our main character is a Seattle event planner named Ruby, who discovers that everyone she’s ever slept with is dying, some by illness and others in accidents, in chronological order of when she was with them. As the plot progresses, we learn that Ruby was a horrible person in many of her relationships, and one of these aggrieved exes put a hex on her. Ruby’s best friend AJ, a true crime superfan, is not so much horrified by all the deaths as she is pumped about having a real case to investigate. 

This show is structurally very similar to The Flight Attendant; a human trainwreck gets into big trouble, alienates her friends, and must confront the trauma that made her act this way. Only then can she see to take ownership of her behavior and fix things. It’s not new, but it’s done well with some novel twists. The writing, dialogue and acting are all very good. The casting was on point and each character feels very well filled out by the actor who played them. I laughed a lot. The show knows how to throw a comedic punch, and it knows when to step back and let the plot breathe. It also knows how to make death funny, which is no small feat. It paints a believable portrait of a self-destructive, traumatized person coming to grips with her issues. That said, there were some serious problems.

Laid mostly shuns the use of asinine romcom tropes, but it leans hard into a few of them.  Here’s a short list: 1) Ruby has a meet-cute with a guy named Isaac, who is apparently a human MRI machine because he can somehow see a good person buried underneath her mountain of awful behavior. 2) Isaac dumps his existing high functioning and successful (but pretentious) girlfriend realizing he can only be truly happy with Ruby. 3) Ruby sleeps with AJ’s boyfriend (while they were broken up) facilitating the obligatory meltdown of their friendship when AJ finds out about it later. 4) Ruby is torn between two guys, both of whom are somehow not repulsed by her tendency to treat men like dixie cups. 5) The root cause of Ruby’s horrible behavior is (of course) unprocessed trauma from being abandoned by her dad.

This show also contains one of the worst storytelling choices I’ve ever seen. Ruby eventually figures out that she’s been hexed by a witch on behalf of an angry ex. The witch explains that the only thing Ruby can do is transfer the hex to someone else, and how this can be done. Ruby understands that putting this murderous hex on another person is horrible, and therefore not an option. But ten minutes into the final episode, she has an epiphany about why she’s so awful, and she gets it through her head that she has to put other people’s needs first. She demonstrates this by arranging for AJ to meet her favorite celebrity. AJ is so blown away by this gesture that she forgives Ruby for sleeping with her boyfriend (while they were broken up), and she tells Ruby that she’s a good person who deserves to be happy, and that Ruby should transfer the hex to someone else so she can consummate her relationship with Isaac. It will also save the lives of Ruby’s exes who haven’t been killed by the hex yet. Including AJ’s boyfriend that Ruby slept with (while they were broken up).

Think about this for a minute; saving those lives initially wasn’t a good enough reason to inflict a murderous hex on an innocent bystander. It became a good enough reason after Ruby learned how to be a good person. Get it? Demonstrating personal growth earns her the right to kill innocent bystanders to save her friends and avoid celibacy. Ruby and her crew try to rationalize giving the hex to a celibate, asexual celebrity (Temple Grandin), but realize that’s not practical. So, they give it to the grouchy, unpleasant, elderly upstairs neighbor lady that none of them like.

I realize it’s a dark comedy, but this whiplash U turn where the characters cheerfully condemn other people to death for their own convenience (right after learning a life lesson) made my brain hurt. I didn’t think anything could possibly redeem the show…until the very end.

The final scene reveals that Ruby’s exes are still dying. Then her father shows up out of nowhere and tells her that he knows what’s happening to her, because the same thing happened to him. The hex was fake. The witch was fake. Their horrible plan to let other people die for their convenience did not work…I laughed so hard I cried.

I realize that while I was watching this show I made a crucial mistake. Instead of switching my brain off and just enjoying the comedy, I introduced logic where it wasn’t welcome. If you can avoid doing that, you’ll probably like this show. Proceed accordingly.

Image Source: Amazon.com